The Gardener from Ochakov (19 page)

Somewhat apprehensively, he picked up the second photograph. The spotlight spared him having to screw up his eyes or hold it inches from his face. This photograph showed a middle-aged man with prominent cheekbones walking down the steps at the front of Chagin's house. The man's lips were twisted in a dissatisfied grimace, and he was looking down at his feet. Igor decided that Vanya must have been lying or squatting down to the left of the gate. Igor recalled seeing a tree there. The next twenty or so images were of various other men, all of whom were sombre and unsmiling, defeated by life. Three individuals had been photographed several times. The profile of Chagin himself was visible in one of the shots.

Then suddenly there were three photographs of Red Valya at the market. In one of them she was extolling the virtues of her fish to a customer; in another, she was talking to a short man with a guilty look on his face.

‘She's rather striking!'

Igor turned round at the sound of the photographer's voice. Igor-the-photographer pointed to Valya.

‘I bet she's got red hair,' he said, sipping his coffee.

‘Why do you say that?' asked Igor, surprised.

‘I can tell by her face,' the photographer replied calmly. ‘Redheads have distinctive facial features and a particular way of using their hands – they're more emphatic, more expressive.'

Igor thought about it. Did any of his contemporary acquaintances have red hair?

‘Is she a relative?' asked the photographer.

‘Yes . . . Well, not mine, my friend's.' Distracted by his own thoughts, Igor wasn't really paying attention.

‘They're good,' the photographer went on. ‘You could make a bit of money out of them, if they were family photos.'

‘What do you mean?' Igor snapped out of his reverie.

‘Some of my clients collect old family albums.'

‘It's not a family album,' sighed Igor, looking through the photos again. He laid them out on the table in front of him. As he was doing so he suddenly remembered the name of the man with the prominent cheekbones, the one Vanya had photographed four times – it was Iosip. He and Vanya had seen him coming out of Chagin's house that evening, when they'd hidden under the apple tree.

‘I've got five more films,' said Igor, looking up at the photographer. ‘The thing is, five hundred dollars is a lot of money . . .'

‘I haven't poured the reagents away yet,' said the photographer. His eyes were smiling. ‘You'll just need to pay for the paper. Are these films the same as the last one?'

Igor placed the five plastic containers on the glass tabletop.

‘Three hundred hryvnas,' said the photographer. ‘German paper.'

‘It's a deal,' Igor nodded.

When he got home Igor went into his bedroom, moved the reading lamp to his bedside table and looked through the photographs with a magnifying glass. They sent shivers running down his spine – the people, the buildings, even the trees in the photographs seemed so familiar. Magnified by the lens, Iosip looked exactly like Stepan, but it wasn't just him – Red Valya reminded him of an ex-girlfriend of Kolyan's called Alla, and also of the salesgirl in the kiosk at Irpen bus station where he always ordered an instant coffee.

‘I must be tired,' Igor said to himself with a yawn. He stuffed the photographs back into the cardboard envelope and switched off the lamp. As he did so he remembered Vanya's request to bring him a couple of burnt-out light bulbs for darning socks, and his lips parted in a smile.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
Stepan came to the house and asked Elena Andreevna to adjust the knot in his tie. When Igor came out of his room into the hallway, he found the two of them occupied by this very task.

Igor thought Stepan looked extremely strange. His tanned, weather-beaten face contrasted starkly with the new grey suit, and the expression on the gardener's face implied that he was all too aware of this – Stepan's eyes were full of uncertainty, and his thin lips were frozen halfway between a smile and its opposite.

After spending several minutes trying to align the knot in the tie with the top button of Stepan's shirt, Elena Andreevna gave a heavy sigh and lowered her hands.

‘This knot isn't right,' she said, shaking her head.

Stepan's expression grew even more strained. He glanced in irritation and dismay at Igor, who was watching them both attentively.

‘Could you possibly tie it again for me?' he asked eventually. ‘Seems I've forgotten how to . . . It's not every year I wear a tie.'

Elena Andreevna hesitantly loosened the tie, undid the knot and turned up the collar on Stepan's shirt. She paused for a moment, then her hands began to weave a new knot. She seemed to be observing them objectively, marvelling that they still remembered how to tie a man's tie.

‘There you go. That's better!' Igor's mother took a step back.

Stepan broke into a relieved smile and suddenly came to life. He rushed into the bathroom to look in the mirror, then out again.

‘Are you off on a date?' asked Igor, with a hint of derision.

‘No,' replied Stepan, looking intently at his landlady's son. ‘I'm going for a walk.'

Without waiting for Igor to respond, the gardener went straight to the front door and disappeared outside.

Igor shrugged. He hitched up his tracksuit bottoms and went into the kitchen, where his mother was sterilising glass jars in a large pan on the stove. The air was hot and steamy, almost tropical. A bag of sugar sat in the left-hand pan of the scales on the windowsill, and Igor almost bumped into a basket of small tomatoes awaiting their fate.

‘Did you want some breakfast?' asked his mother, turning round.

‘No, I'm fine,' said Igor, retreating into the hallway.

The sun had migrated from the capital to the suburbs and hung in the very centre of the sky, almost directly over the bus station. Glancing up at the blue sky, Igor smiled. So what if it was raining in Kiev? Irpen was enjoying a golden, sun-drenched autumn!

Igor had originally planned to go to the local clinic and speak to a genito-urinary specialist about Red Valya's diagnosis, but he changed his mind before he even got there. Someone's bound to see me and report back to Mother, and then I'll never hear the end of it! he thought. At that moment, as luck would have it, he spotted a pharmacy. Igor waited outside while an old woman in a quilted jacket pushed her prescription through the little window at the counter; as soon as she left, he dived inside. The elderly female pharmacist smiled expectantly at him.

‘A friend of mine has been given this diagnosis,' said Igor. ‘I'm not even sure what medicine she needs. She's too embarrassed to come herself.'

The woman in the white coat took the piece of paper from him. She put her glasses on and peered at the writing on it.

‘I can see why,' she said, looking up at Igor. ‘She'd be better off going to the clinic and getting it treated properly. Or is she too embarrassed to do that as well?'

Igor panicked.

‘No, she can't go to the clinic . . . She's worried she'll lose her job.'

The pharmacist browsed the array of medicines in the cabinet behind her.

‘Well, if you're able to personally supervise the dosage,' she said, ‘then –'

‘I will,' promised Igor, who wanted to escape from this medicinal cornucopia as soon as possible. He was terrified that someone else would come in and overhear their conversation.

‘Don't you need treating yourself, young man? It's not the sort of disease to be taken lightly.'

‘No, definitely not,' Igor answered hurriedly, with a glance at the door. ‘We're just friends!'

The pharmacist nodded, then sat down and began writing something on a piece of paper. Igor's nerves were stretched to their limit. Just then the door opened and a young woman came in. Her cheeks were unnaturally flushed, and her eyes were watering.

The woman in the white coat finally finished writing. ‘Here,' she said, passing the piece of paper to Igor. ‘I've written down the instructions for each medicine – there are thirteen altogether. So, that'll be eight hundred hryvnas.'

Igor was flabbergasted. He automatically felt his pockets. He knew he only had about a hundred hryvnas on him.

‘I'll have to come back in half an hour,' he said, glancing at the woman behind him, who was holding her hand over her mouth and coughing discreetly. ‘I didn't realise it would be quite so much. Can you put them aside for me?'

‘It's the antibiotics that cost the most. I'm afraid they're the only option these days.' The pharmacist spread her hands sympathetically. ‘So, are you going to take them?'

‘Yes, definitely,' Igor assured her, backing away from the counter. ‘I just need to get the money.'

Igor had planned to spend the afternoon ‘loafing around the house', as his mother sometimes put it, but things didn't turn out that way. No sooner had he picked up the TV guide to plan his viewing schedule for the rest of the day than Kolyan called.

‘I hope you're at home,' he exclaimed cheerfully.

‘Er, yes.'

‘Well, I'm in a minibus taxi on my way to your place. I've got meat and vodka! Although, come to think of it, you were supposed to provide the drinks . . .'

‘Meat and vodka?' repeated Igor, sounding somewhat less enthusiastic than his friend.

‘Aren't you pleased?'

‘Of course I am!' declared Igor, managing to sound genuinely enthusiastic.

‘Well, you'd better get the skewers, the matches and the glasses ready!'

In less than five minutes Igor had reconciled himself to the change of plan and was looking forward to the barbecue. He checked once more that it wasn't going to rain, then selected two large shot glasses from the kitchen cupboard and took a couple of onions from the basket under the table, in case they needed them. Two plates, for the sake of propriety, and a couple of forks. By the time he'd finished getting everything together, he'd managed to fill two carrier bags.

‘You take after your mother all right!' remarked Kolyan, when he saw his friend standing there armed with the bulging carrier bags, ready for the afternoon.

They decided to base themselves in a small birch grove about three hundred metres from the nearest house. It had the added bonus of an abundant supply of firewood. Igor spread a square of oilcloth and laid out the plates, then started preparing the fire.

Meanwhile, Kolyan wandered about singing to himself. As chief benefactor, having provided the meat for the shashlik, he was fully entitled to do so. Suddenly he cried out. Squatting down in the undergrowth, he turned and called out to Igor.

‘Hey, bring me a knife and a carrier bag!'

Kolyan cut two sizeable orange-cap boletus mushrooms and put them into the carrier bag. From that point on his energies were entirely devoted to mushroom hunting and he no longer paid any attention to his friend, who was busy assembling a small grill for the shashlik over the roaring fire.

Neither of them bothered to keep an eye on the time. It was irrelevant, anyway. They had the whole afternoon ahead of them and it was going to revolve around quality leisure time, in which shashlik and vodka would play a critical role. The only limits on such occasions are the energy and stamina of the participants. As the birch firewood turned to coals, Kolyan returned to the fire with his bag full of mushrooms and opened the bottle of Nemirov vodka. Given the success of his spontaneous foraging Kolyan decided on the first toast.

‘To the mushroom harvest!' he declared, raising his glass in a jubilant mood.

Kolyan didn't even chase his first shot of vodka, simply sniffing a piece of bread instead. He did, however, start eyeing up the plastic bucket of marinated meat that he'd brought with him. Reaching for the skewers, he set about skilfully threading pieces of pork onto them.

‘You know what, it takes me an hour's trek by metro and minibus taxi to get to the nearest forest . . . but you've got it all right on your doorstep. I ought to buy a dacha round here.'

‘Business is booming then, I take it,' remarked Igor.

Kolyan smiled. ‘It's only a matter of time. A good hacker will always be in demand – everyone needs information!'

Igor thought about it. ‘I don't,' he said, smiling back at his friend.

‘Yeah, but what do you matter? You've got no
ambition
. By Soviet standards you're a parasite and a sponger. I bet you'd love to be a landlord! Letting something out and living off the money you earn, without having to actually do anything . . . Trouble is, you'd need something to let out in the first place, which you don't have. If you want to buy an apartment or an office, you need to be making five to ten thousand dollars a month, or more. That's why people need information!'

‘Well, if you happen to come across any information worth ten thousand dollars a month, do me a favour and send it my way!' retorted Igor, not at all offended at being called a parasite and a sponger. ‘The thing is, I'm just not a natural businessman. I see myself as more of a treasure hunter – always have done, really, ever since I was little.'

‘Well, I'm happy to drink to you finding your next treasure trove!' Kolyan burst out laughing and filled their glasses. ‘So, what are we drinking to? A pot of gold, or a chest full of diamonds?'

‘A suitcase full of diamonds and guns.'

They clinked glasses and downed their shots. Kolyan placed the skewers of meat over the glowing birch coals. Igor felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to bring up the subject of his trips to Ochakov again, but two shots of vodka were not enough to loosen his tongue. Particularly since all previous attempts to tell Kolyan about Ochakov had been crushed by the scathing sarcasm of his response.

The shashlik was cooked to perfection, so much so that they soon ran out of vodka to wash it down with. The empty bottle lay near the campfire, dampening their mood.